


Their Names are Pain and Fear

by cognomen, MayGlenn



Series: Man Has Only Two Masters [3]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Handcuffs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Threesome - A/A/O, Threesome - F/M/M, but not in a sexy way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-05 14:42:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15172892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: Waverly turns his attention toward Illya and Gaby, calmly. “Why don’t the two of you get dressed and ready for the day while I work things out with Mr. Sanders? I’ll have a pot of coffee sent up and we can all sit down and discuss this.”Gaby takes Illya’s arm and coaxes him gently after her, gathering her clothes and heading into the bathroom for privacy.“Come now, Mr. Sanders,” Waverly says, gesturing to the American. “Let’s have these gentlemen wait outside rather than shaking up the whole building, and have a civil discussion about how to retrieve our missing asset."“That’s Director, to you,” Sanders snaps, but he goes with Waverly, all the same.Illya lets himself be dragged into the bathroom, where he sits heavily on the floor as the magnitude of what has happened descends on him. Sure, he might have just made the cold war hot, and sure, he could easily have been shot just now, and sure, he was going to have to track down his former partner, but—“He left us,” he says, dumbly, staring at a spot underneath the toilet. “Why did he leave us?”





	1. Chapter 1

Illya wakes instantly where Gaby wakes slowly, though he doesn’t startle, nor is he even fully awake for several minutes. He enjoys holding Gaby, and wonders what Napoleon is making for breakfast, as is his way. 

Then he remembers they’re in a hotel with no kitchen. 

He doesn’t hear water running in the bathroom, either. 

Illya sits up, unsettling Gaby, who had just begun to stir. 

“What—?” she murmurs, rolling over to see Illya’s unsettled expression. She too expects to smell something cooking at any second, until her sleepy mind connects that Illya looks worried because they’re in a hotel.

She sits up. “Maybe he’s just gone out to get breakfast?”

“Maybe,” Illya says, forcing himself to not assume the worst because he thought they were past this. He thought he could trust Napoleon now. The alpha posturing bullshit is just so unnecessary, he should be better than—

Before either of them can get up, the door to their room bursts open, letting in a flood of alphas with guns. Two of them train weapons on them while four more spread out to check the suite, and actually before either Illya or Gaby can ask what is going on or kill anyone, Sanders walks in. 

_ Ugh. Americans. _

Illya is half-relieved it’s “just” Sanders before the CIA director lifts up a camera and snaps a picture of them. 

In bed. Together. 

Illya comes alive, incensed. “Just what the fuck do you—”

“Now, now, Kuryakin, that's just a little bit of insurance until you track down my operative.”

“Insurance?!” Illya demands, standing up and getting into the beta’s face. 

“What do you mean, track down your operative?” Gaby asks. “He’s here. He was just here.”

“Not anymore. We got a ping from one of his accounts in Brussels, of all places. So what happened? You scare him off with your deviant ways?”

Illya punches Sanders so hard he goes down immediately. He hadn’t even noticed his fingers had been twitching before he did it. 

Men shout and ten rifle barrels aim at his head—too close, he can probably kill them all if—

“Stand down, damn it!” Sanders shouts from the floor, and Illya flashes a look at Gaby:  _ Sanders clearly needs them, or he wouldn’t allow him to get away with that.  _

Gaby becomes curt and cold nearly immediately, glad she had at least slipped into a nightgown, because she gets up and even with the guns pointed at her, snatches the camera out of Sanders’ hands, and promptly marches into the bathroom to drop it into the toilet. At least one of the soldiers looks impressed as they all take a few steps back and lower their guns. 

“Do you know it’s a crime to take a photo of someone against their will in Germany?” Gaby wondered aloud. She crouches beside Sanders. “Are you sure  _ you _ didn’t scare him off?”

“I haven’t been in contact with him,” Sanders is sitting up at least, holding his jaw while training a nasty glare at the both of them. “I keep tabs, because Solo is a criminal, despite whatever legal strings Waverly pulled to start giving you all such high treatment.”

“Napoleon is good man,” Illya hisses. “Twice the man you are, does more good for the world in a day than you do for America in a year.” 

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from a homo—”

Illya pulls his fist back again, but Gaby snaps, “Illya,” and Sanders, wisely, doesn’t finish the word—though he does look impressed by Gaby and looks like he desperately wants to say he knows who wears the trousers in the relationship. He manages not to, if barely. 

“So, you want us to find him, and you bring guns in?” Gaby demands. “You could  _ ask _ .”

“He certainly could,” a clipped English voice calls from the hallway, causing the soldiers to come back to attention, a few weapons to swing toward the door. Waverly steps into the hall to diffuse the situation.

“You let him get away, you son of a bitch,” Sanders growls, but his tone is a little more subdued than it might be, given that he’s on the floor and Waverly is clearly still on his feet. “Can you call off your dogs?”

“I could say the same to you.” But Waverly turns his attention toward Illya and Gaby, calmly. “Why don’t the two of you get dressed and ready for the day while I work things out with Mr. Sanders? I’ll have a pot of coffee sent up and we can all sit down and discuss this.”

Gaby takes Illya’s arm and coaxes him gently after her, gathering her clothes and heading into the bathroom for privacy. 

“Come now, Mr. Sanders,” Waverly says, gesturing to the American. “Let’s have these gentlemen wait outside rather than shaking up the whole building, and have a civil discussion about how to retrieve our missing asset.”

“That’s Director, to you,” Sanders snaps, but he goes with Waverly, all the same. 

Illya lets himself be dragged into the bathroom, where he sits heavily on the floor as the magnitude of what has happened descends on him. Sure, he might have just made the cold war hot, and sure, he could easily have been shot just now, and sure, he was going to have to track down his former partner, but—

“He left us,” he says, dumbly, staring at a spot underneath the toilet. “Why did he leave us?” 

Gaby sits down next to him, leaning shoulder-to-shoulder with Illya as she considers the same question. It finally has time to hit her. “Maybe he was in some kind of danger he didn’t feel like he could tell us about?”

Even as she says it, she knows it’s not likely to be the case. Any physical danger the three of them could handle, and Napoleon had nothing to hide from them. He never seemed interested in hiding things from them, in fact, as if it was refreshing just to be himself. 

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, Illya. Midlife crisis?”

Illya lets out a laugh that almost cracks, pitching high at the end, and he puts a hand over his face in either embarrassment or acute distress, or both, and he makes no noise for some time, and breathes slowly. His fingers twitch, and Gaby grabs his hand to still them, so he grabs her around the middle and finally takes his hand away from his face to hold her. 

He’s torn between anger and fear and a strange sense of betrayal.  _ He left them. _ Napoleon loved them and he left them. He almost doesn’t know what to do with his feelings for Gaby, anymore. It was safer when he didn’t deal with any of his feelings at all. He tries to pull back, still not saying anything. 

Gaby holds onto him, because she needs  _ him _ , now that Napoleon has gone. She hangs onto Illya fiercely, refusing to let go. “I think we should find him and get some answers. Maybe he just wants to be pursued. He  _ is _ an omega after all.”

It doesn’t sound quite right, but she has to fight all of her alpha instincts that scream at her to track Napoleon down and chain him to a bedpost until he learns better—not that she ever actually  _ would _ , it just feels nice to think about it instead of how hurt she is. 

Illya relents, because he likes having someone to relent to, and because he can smell how upset Gaby is. They both reek of lost omega, as pungent as if he had died. It's maybe not a half of himself that feels like it's gone, but it's a good third. He hugs her back, making a noise like a sob, except that it is dry.

“What did we do?” he asks, unable to cry. Did they not pursue him enough already? Had they pursued him too much? Or was he in some kind of bigger trouble? 

Before she can answer, Illya takes a deep breath. “We will find him.”

He gets them both to their feet in one motion that leaves them both almost dizzy. Unmoored. Last night feels like a hundred nights ago. Both of them fear they cannot trust the other, now, too, and worry that they're only going to trust each other more. 

They get dressed quickly, putting on their composure in tandem like armor, or a mask. Just before they head back out to face their bosses, Gaby stops, puts her hands under Illya’s chin, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “We will find him. Talk to him. Bring him back—not for them, but for us.” 

Illya nods. He knows he should say something, but all he can offer is a firm embrace, full of promise. He nods and manages, “For us.”

“Certainly took your time,” Sanders points out with a chuckle only he finds amusing, when they are led to a new private room where coffee and breakfast are laid out. The directors are tucking in, but Gaby consumes nothing, and Illya has only one cup of black coffee.

“So you say he was here last night? About what time did you see him?” Waverly asks over Sanders’ rudeness. 

“Very early this morning,” Gaby says, to cover Illya’s glowering silence. “He took a late bath, and then went to bed.”

“Went?” Sanders prompts.

“Around what time was that?” Waverly asks, cutting off any cat and mouse nonsense.

“One-thirty, maybe?” Gaby hadn’t exactly been looking at the clock. 

“And you show his account active in Brussels at seven this morning, local time?” Waverly prompts.

Sanders clearly has to do a little math involving time zones, but finally he nods. 

“Are we relatively sure Napoleon was actually in Belgium, and didn’t make his transaction by telephone?” Waverly asks. 

“He’s not here, Brussels is reachable by car,” Sanders says. “But anything is possible with Agent Solo. He’s a thief, and he knows how to get away with it.”

“If he knows how to get away with it, then how did you catch him?” Illya asks, and feels better after saying it.  _ Maybe Napoleon wanted to be caught? _ he thinks, but before he gets his hopes up, he shakes his head. 

“We’ll need a car,” he tells Waverly, “and whatever you have on him you did not tell us,” he demands of Sanders. 

“That’ll be need-to-know. You check in, we’ll give you what we find.” 

Sanders and Illya stare at one another. This sounds like a way to insure the CIA gets to Napoleon first, and it doesn’t sound pleasant. 

“You’ll have a car,” Waverly says. “And what you need. Solo’s a good agent, even if he is flighty. I’d like him back.”

Sanders shakes his head. “I’ve had enough of cleaning up after Napoleon. It’s starting to be that what we’re getting isn’t worth what we’ve  _ put into _ him.”

Illya stands up, and Sanders looks both as though he’s worried he overstepped again—but also like he’ll say something even cruder again next time. 

Gaby pinches a pressure point in Illya’s wrist to force him out of the breakfast room and back to their suite. Waverly’s men are packing their things, but she shoos them out so they can be alone. 

Illya’s hands are twitching again, the precursor to a psychotic snap of violence. Twice in one day, and Gaby can’t remember the last time it happened before this. 

“Illya.” 

When Illya blinks, he feels like she might have said his name more than once. “Sorry. Yes?” 

“Are you going to be okay to do this?” Gaby asks, looking him in the eyes. “I don’t want to make excuses for him, but I think Napoleon is…afraid of this. Like you were afraid of it, when we first started. Right?”

Illya feels small and vulnerable. He wants to ask childlike questions: ‘Why did he do this?’ ‘Why didn’t he tell us?’ ‘Doesn’t he love us?’ but then he  _ looks  _ at her. And Gaby looks fragile, too. Worried, just as he, and scared, and angry. They both know enough betrayal to have thought it wouldn’t hurt the next time, but of course it does. 

He tugs her into a tight hug and gets a grip, as much as he can. Just a mission, he tells himself. Capture alive. 

(He’s always been bad at those.) 

“I am okay,” he promises, like saying it will make it true. “You’re right. Maybe he just…”

But Illya trails off. He has no guesses, really. Napoleon is as baffling as ever. 

“We will find him,” Illya finishes. He cups her chin and looks down at her. “Are you okay?” 

She sighs, gathering herself, lifting her hands up to cup Illya’s chin in return. She hopes the answers are there, but honestly doesn’t mind even if there’s no explanation as long as Napoleon just comes back to them. She can’t possibly be wrong about the connection they all had—she’s sure that there really  _ is _ something there. Something they all feel, together.

“I’m okay,” she says. “Worried, of course.”

Gaby pauses for a long instant, then leans into him, puts her arms around his strong, tall figure and hangs on, and wonders, in the smallest, most traitorous part of her soul, what they’ll do if Napoleon says no, that he’s done with them, doesn’t care for them. Can they be happy without him? Can he be happy without them?

She shakes it off. “Illya, I love you. I love him too. When we find him, you should beat him up in a bathroom. He’ll remember how he feels.”

Illya gives a shaky laugh at that, so it does the trick. “Always right, my Chop-Shop Girl.” 

He kisses her forehead, and they break to finish packing. Luckily, no one had been into the bathroom to take his photographs—as near-incriminating as they are—and Illya pauses to study them, like they might provide a clue to what went wrong. A sinister figure in the background, or a photo where the smile doesn’t quite reach Napoleon’s eyes. A ticket to Brussels sticking out of his coat pocket. Anything.

But there’s nothing, and he puts them into a folder and slides them into his suitcase. 


	2. Chapter 2

They leave the hotel to find a car waiting for them. Sanders is, mercifully, elsewhere, and Waverly leans into the passenger side, where Illya sits with his briefcase in his lap.

“This is all we know, chaps,” Waverly says, slipping them a slim envelope. “We’ll let you know if we find out more. Check in when you have him, and—well, we’ll give you time before we have to let Sanders know.” 

Illya swallows, his fingers tapping nervously—but only twice—against the envelope. He wonders what Sanders will do to Napoleon.

To whatever’s  _ left  _ of Napoleon. 

“Sorry we let him go,” Gaby says, taking the folder, and giving an apologetic glance at Waverly.

“Nothing to apologize for,” Waverly assures. “These things happen, every so often, when you pin a man down under the weight of his past. Though…”

He trails off, with a glance  up the street. “I would really prefer it to be us that found him. Good luck, you two.”

Gaby takes off at speed, and when they’re alone Illya opens up the envelope. It’s sparse, as he guessed, and the picture of their target has been, kindly, removed—he can tell by the empty paper clip. But it has the information on his accounts, which is interesting. 

“He’s emptied most of his accounts,” Illya says. “He’s...running, really. Trying to get away from Sanders, maybe?” 

It’s almost starting to look up. 

“Trying to hide his trail by picking up all the breadcrumbs at once,” Gaby wonders, without taking her eyes off the road. “If he takes all his cash and goes to ground, it will be nearly impossible to find him.”

But they can start in Brussels, even if it feels a bit like chasing their own tails. It’s going to be a long drive there. 

“Where did it say his other accounts were?” Gaby asks. “And how soon after the first account did he empty the others?”

“All at the same time, maybe,” Illya says, brow furrowing as he tries to make sense of the numbers. “Wireless transfers. Swiss accounts, Roman, and Belgian. Ah. One in New York. This must be where Sanders caught him. Not much even  _ in  _ that one.”

He shakes his head, disheartened again, and resolves to leave his heart out of this, as much as he can. 

“He has to have  _ art  _ somewhere, hasn’t he? In one of these vaults?” Illya finally manages. “Something that can’t be wired. Something he wouldn’t leave behind. You know how he is.” 

“I doubt if he has art anywhere, it’s someplace Sanders knows about,” Gaby says, and then slaps her hand on the wheel, aggravated. “I would never have thought he’d leave without his wardrobe, either, but all he took was his briefcase. He could have things  _ anywhere. _ What else does the file say?”

“No family living, things we knew, languages—did you know he knew Japanese?” 

They both go quiet, waiting for the other to say it. 

“He did have that—”

“Operation. Maybe he knows the doctor—”

“Or has other friends.” 

“At least a bank vault.” 

“The Japanese and Americans get on well, now. Don’t they?” 

“It’d be smart to get as far away as possible…”

“I don’t speak Japanese, though,” Illya huffs, bracing himself. “Do you?” 

“Not any useful amount,” Gaby admits. “Which he would know. So if he wanted to hide from  _ us… _ ”

“But you can’t drive to Japan.”

“No, he’ll have to catch a flight.  _ From _ where is one thing, but it’s a safe bet he’ll land in either Narita or Wakkanai. I don’t suppose you have any idea whether that doctor was on Hokkaido or Honshu?”

“No idea. Lucky he’ll stand out in Japan,” Illya suggests, and then opens a map. “Or maybe...we can catch up with him before he gets there.”

He glances at Gaby. “We will have to make some guesses. Where he will fly from. Maybe split up?”

Gaby isn’t sure she likes that idea, but it will cover more ground, and they have a lot to cover. “What were you thinking, as far as where we might try to intercept him?”

She guesses it depends on how really dedicated he was to the idea. If Napoleon didn’t want them to find him, he could go anywhere. India, Egypt… he could even go the other way, heading for Japan over Canada. She sighs. “Perhaps you should go one way, and I the other? We can meet in Narita, whether we’re successful or not.”

Illya sighs, leaning back in the seat and closing his eyes. The idea of splitting up is uncomfortable, even though he had suggested it. 

“Let us see what we find in Brussels. I can take train from there, and you can take the car. If we must split up.”

Illya rubs his hands together to keep them from twitching, and he squeezes Gaby’s knee. “If it's anything to do with me, I'm sorry.”

“Illya,” she says, her tone almost scolding. “You’ve been a gentleman. Maybe almost too much. It’s not you. Napoleon is…well. You know him as well as I do.”

Trying to make light of the situation, she suggests, “Maybe we’ve let him have almost  _ too _ much leniency. Perhaps he just needs a reminder of where—and to whom—he belongs.”

“I thought  _ that  _ would make him run away!” Illya laughs, a high-strung, giddy sound, and he cuts it off. His sigh is more of a groan this time. “I’m going to kill him either way.” 

“Think of it this way,” Gaby says, as the miles pass by outside their car windows and she starts to feel less in shock about the whole thing. “If it weren’t for Sanders and Waverly, I bet you we could give him a week to get it out of his system and realize what it is he’s missing, and he’d be back.”

Illya was pretty sure Napoleon had left because things had gotten  _ too  _ serious, but he was a little afraid to say it aloud. Maybe he should never have said ‘I love you’ to him. Though it hardly meant anything in English, to Americans—Napoleon said he  _ loved  _ things as mundane as Scotch, every other day.  _ What  _ had him so upset?

But Illya glanced at her, daring to look wistful. “Do you...think so?”

Gaby, in fact,  _ does _ think so. Perhaps things had been too intense, too quickly, and Napoleon just needed time to get things straight in his head. Or to know that he  _ could _ get away, if he needed to. Gaby clucks her tongue, thoughtfully. “I think he just needs to reassure himself that he’s not becoming the typical omega, interested only in keeping house, having children, being kept and pampered…that if he wanted or needed it, he could still be independent.”

“Having children?” Illya laughs. “He’s a good chef, but—I suppose that’s the only typical thing about him. About any of us, really.”

He takes her hand and squeezes it until she has to shift gears. 

She glances at Illya. “He’s hardly young, he’s had a long time to get used to it being only him. What’s he supposed to do with  _ two _ of us, all of a sudden? You’ve noticed he’s gone out less, recently. No prowling, always comes to us for his heats. It scares him.”

Illya sighs again. 

“No, I know. I thought he only got better at sneaking off, so I did not know about it.” He pauses as that sinks in, and drops his head to his hands. “He did. He got  _ very _ good at sneaking off.”  

“I suppose so,” Gaby sighs. “Not so good he didn’t leave a trail, however. I’m sure if he wanted to, he could have done it all without dipping into his account in Brussels.”

It gave them a place to start, where otherwise they might never have had one. It leads her to believe he wants to be found, or for them to know he’ll be back. Unfortunately they hardly have the time to really think this out. 

...

In Brussels, the trail is cold. They have to go forward on intuition. Gaby reluctantly agrees to go separate ways from Illya, on the condition that it would only be for a few days, and both agreed on their travel itineraries before hand. It leaves Gaby traveling down and around, taking a train that runs beneath Russia, while Illya—sensibly—has decided to go through. 

She kisses him goodbye reluctantly.

“If you find him, tell him I love him and I’m going to kill him,” she says.

“If you find him, leave something for me,” Illya answers. They’ve ducked into an alcove for a tearful farewell, not caring who might discover them. “And I’ll see you in Narita in four weeks, unless we find him before that.” 

They know they have to communicate through Waverly from here on, though they have an emergency system in place. Illya doesn’t relish the prospect of working alone again, but he’s good at it. He kisses Gaby again, pressing her to the wall where someone might assume she’s an omega if they don’t sniff too carefully. “Be careful. I will miss you, my little Chop-Shop Girl.” 

It isn’t until Illya is on the train to Berlin and the conductor asks for his identification that he finds his KGB badge missing—his  _ real  _ one. It startles him so much that he stands up, hitting his head on the luggage rack above him. 

Was it— _ possible _ ? 

Had Napoleon stolen his badge, intending to steal himself through the entirety of the Soviet Union to get to Japan? 

Even more absurd—did Napoleon really think he could  _ outrun  _ him? Through  _ Russia _ ? 

Maybe this idiot really did want to be found. 

If there’s a touch of irony in allowing himself to be caught in Moscow, it isn’t lost on Napoleon. He has Illya’s badge in his pocket, and after the days he’s been separated from them, already a longing in his heart. He supposes he’ll have a lot to answer for.  But that’s been his life always—find something steady and destabilize it, as if he can’t stand to live too long in a position where he’s secure. 

Illya finds him with his hands in his pockets, and a good vantage of Moscow, overlooking the city. At least this time, it is not on fire. 

“It really was only fitting to flee France to Russia,” Napoleon says, when he senses Illya’s intense gaze on him. 

The first thing Illya feels is relief—it's a rush of pheromones that sing at being reunited with his mate. “You should have known not to try to cross Russia with a name like yours.”

But his voice is dark, not playful, and by the time he's crossed the distance between them, several violent fantasies have played through Illya’s mind which either end in breaking Napoleon's legs so he can't ever run away again or breaking his face so he won't want to. 

“Hm,” Napoleon observes, turning half a glance back toward Illya to look at him from the corner of his eye, gauging how long he has to live, perhaps. “ To advance or not to advance is a matter for grave consideration; but when once the offensive has been assumed, it must be sustained to the last extremity.”

They are alone up here, for the moment, and he whirls Napoleon around and slams him up against the wall, and, for good measure, slaps him full in the face with an ungloved hand. “You  _ fuck _ . This is not a game of chess.”

Napoleon shoves him back, showing his teeth. In the depths of his internal workings, usually as finely tuned as a precision wristwatch, something has slipped loose. It jangles around inside him, sending him off balance. It leaves ability to keep time (in the way that all souls must keep time) askew. “I told you at the beginning of it all I wouldn’t be  _ kept _ .”

Illya throws a punch next time, and then it’s grappling; the leveraging of strength against one another. Normally, the contest between Alpha and Omega is not so balanced. Then again, the both of them are exceptional for their breed, and Napoleon handles his own until Illya starts using his center of balance against him. It’s a fight Napoleon has lost before, that the thrown-off cogs of himself knows he’ll lose again. But he has to fight it. 

Illya is glad for the fight: it helps to work out the too many emotions he's dealing with, chief among them the anger he feels at being so hurt by Napoleon. It feels good to hurt him, in turn. And he doesn't pull his punches, leaves Napoleon with a bleeding lip and nose, and several bruises besides, and he takes extra delight that his nice clothes scrape across the pavement and tear.

He  _ loved  _ Napoleon, and the only thing that makes him sure he still does is how angry he still is. This isn't how you bring in a wayward partner. This isn't even how you take down an enemy. This is something bigger, more tangled, and Illya really needs Gaby here to help him understand these emotions and to tell him to stop beating Napoleon to a pulp—to be fair, he's pretty sure his own nose is bleeding and his fingers are broken where Napoleon threw his punch into a wall, so it's not like he isn't giving tit for tat. The difference is that Illya doesn't really register the pain. Maybe Napoleon has already hurt him so much, these little things don't matter.

The fight winds down from the grand gestures of two well-trained spies into the biting-and-grappling of schoolchildren. Illya throws Napoleon over his shoulder onto the ground and then lands on him, winding their bodies together like Napoleon is a rodeo calf to be subdued. With the strength of Illya’s arm wound around his neck and his own determination unable to match it, Napoleon watches the spots swim in front of his eyes and then closes them, leans his weight back against Illya’s with a gasp, and says the words that matter.

“I’m sorry,” Napoleon wheezes, soft but heartfelt. He doesn’t quite know what  _ else _ he can say, what else is adequate. 

Illya holds him for a second longer, as what he says takes time to penetrate, or he just wants to make Napoleon wait for air another second. Fighting is a lot like sex: it leaves them panting in an awkward tangle, and Illya lets up on his windpipe only to press him against the stairwell they've ended up in, the back of his neck against an iron bar.

“Maybe someday I will believe that,” Illya says, and kisses Napoleon, hard and demanding and for  _ himself _ .

All this, all of it coming together,  _ eases _ something in Napoleon that he hadn’t realized was going wild. All of his thoughts of control, all of his convictions to run away and get himself back under his own power flicker out. Illya  _ needs _ him; not to own him, not like all of the things Napoleon is afraid of in in an Alpha—not the things that he toys with when he’s working, the standard behaviors he’s become so good at manipulating—but as part of himself. 

And if Napoleon is the one with more finesse and skill in sleight of hand, Illya is still a Russian agent. He has Napoleon’s hands cuffed to the rail behind him before he breaks the kiss. 

Napoleon works his mouth over his split lower lip, and looks up at Illya with a faintly rakish smile that smacks of sheepish embarrassment to be caught so. He tastes blood, and giving Illya whatever winsomeness was left in him at the moment, wonders, “Is all this really necessary?”

Illya sees the fight go out of Napoleon, and he lets himself relax then, a fraction more. He gets up, righting his clothes, and paws through Napoleon’s pockets until he finds his stolen badge. “You tell me. I need to make a phone call. Be here when I get back.” 

Napoleon quirks his brows, and then slides the handcuffs down the pipe a little, sitting down on the dirty pavement as if to indicate he doesn’t mean to go anywhere but right here. He doesn’t, in fact. His face hurts and his head is pounding and his heartbeat is going to take some time to slow down again, but for all that he’s keyed up he’s also relieved.

“Mr. Solo,” a voice drags him out of his introspection, and Napoleon’s heart sinks. “How nice to see you again.”

“Sanders,” Napoleon greets, getting back to his feet. “I plan on going back with—”

“Us, yes,” Sanders says gesturing around at his cadre of armed men. “I’d appreciate quietly, but we can do it however you’d like. I’m grateful to your Alpha friend for leaving you gift wrapped for us.  _ Just _ like we agreed. You should really choose better partners.”

One of the soldiers produces a small saw while the others hold their guns trained on Napoleon, and he tries to process what Sanders means. Had Illya—sold him back to the CIA? He was working for them, now? Or was it just a convenient way to get rid of Napoleon so he could continue to benefit the KGB, a betrayal in exchange for Napoleon’s. Retaliation. 

...

Illya makes contact with Gaby—not Waverly, not Sanders—leaves a message for her, in code, at the hotel they had worked out she would stay in tonight. She may not get the message for a few hours, but today. She could be in town tonight. They would all be reunited by tomorrow, if they were lucky. 

But when Illya takes the steps two at a time to where he had left Napoleon—well.

The cuffs are sawn off and left on the ground. 

His mind fixes, oddly, on where Solo could have hidden a saw that he didn’t find. It doesn’t fix on  _ he’s gone, he’s gone again, he left, he doesn’t want to be found, he was playing me from the beginning and he’s gone again, what will I tell Gaby, he’s gone, he’s gone _ because there isn’t enough of his heart left to break. Illya picks up the handcuffs, carries them to the nearest bar, and orders enough to make him forget.


	3. Chapter 3

Gaby does not find Illya where he promised to be, but it doesn’t take long for her to locate him, hours later when she arrives. He’s causing a ruckus in the bar, having had enough alcohol to make him rowdy, but not enough to make him tired.

“Illya!” she scolds, tired and irritated. “What are you doing?”

Illya is smiling and friendly in the way he only gets when he is stupidly drunk and very unhappy. 

“Gaby!” he answers her, throwing his arms wide as he continues entirely in Russian: “[You’re just in time! My comrade here—oh, no, this is me—I’m buying everyone in the bar shots!]”

A “Ура!“ goes up, and Illya is fumbling with money and his badges rather sloppily as he pays the bartender. “[Here, here, have a drink with us. I’m a single man again!]”

“Ура!“ the crowd answers. 

Gaby frowns at him darkly. She  _ should _ drag him out by his ear and kick his ass into the street. He’s not a single man as long as she has any say about it, for one thing, and for another, “Where is Napoleon? You called and told me you had him.”

The crowd looks less certain of this, though one drunk from the back manages to put half a fact together with another half a fact, and calls out, “Napoleon never made it past Moscow! He turns around and goes home. Is past, long time! History!”

“[I never wanted to marry, anyway!]” Illya tells her happily, and someone clicks on a radio. Illya holds out both hands to her. “Do you want to dance?” 

This much, at least, he says in English, and it threatens to bring him back to that hotel room all those nights and months ago, when she was his fiancée but not really, and his lip trembles, once, before he smiles again, bright-eyed and red-nosed. 

Gaby sighs out, and goes to him, taking both his hands, and hoisting him out of his seat. She orders a bottle of vodka to go, pays his tab, salutes the men, and bodily drags him from the bar before she leans up to whisper in his ear. “Yes, I want to dance, Illya. I always want to dance with you. Let’s go somewhere we can dance  _ without being killed _ and you can talk to me.”

Illya’s hand twitches against his leg in spite of how loose and silly the rest of him is, and between the two of them they order one room with two beds that they don’t plan on using, and Illya remembers not to try to kiss her before they are in the room together. 

This is not an opulent room, and in fact, after their usual accommodations, even the Russian and the East Berliner feel like they don’t mind the occasional capitalist indulgence, if capitalist indulgences include water that actually gets hot and a window that actually opens. 

There is a radio, however, and Illya turns it on. He’s a terrible dancer (it’s why he hates it—that, and he is too tall and everyone notices him and how bad he is at dancing), but he’s out of inhibitions and just wants to not have to feel, or think. 

“Gaby, I missed you,” he tells her, throwing his arms around her and stepping mostly to the tune. 

“I missed you too,” she admits, though they’ve only been apart a couple of days. She supports Illya’s weight to keep him balanced so he can dance, and looks into his eyes for a long time until she sees everything. 

“Illya, did you call me all the way back because you missed me, and you couldn’t find him?” she wonders, not sure what other explanation there could be. 

“I found him,” he admits, all in a rush, and he staggers physically. “And he doesn't want to be with us...anymore.”

That stops Gaby cold, and she goes still, looking up at him in pained disbelief. “He told you that?”

At some point Illya stops dancing and just stands there like an overgrown boy who knows he is about to be scolded. 

“I let him get away,” he says, and sniffles. But he breaks down completely when he says, “I scared him away. I am sorry.”

Gaby reaches up and pulls them together, resting her cheek against his cheek though she has to go up on tiptoes and bend him all the way down to her, and closes her own eyes, pained as well. She doesn’t want to believe it, but Illya seems so convinced. “Well, then  _ I _ will catch him. And he will answer to me. I can’t believe it. I  _ don’t _ believe it.”

She sounds angry, but her voice is wavering, too. 

Illya drops to his knees so he can wrap his arms around her waist and hide his face against her stomach as he continues to be wracked with drunken sobs. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—I only left him for two minutes. I was so angry I—I left him cuffed to a rail, but when I got back, he was gone. Sawed through them so he wouldn't have to be with m-me…”

“Oh, Illya…” 

She soothes her fingers through his hair, not expecting this level of reaction from the normally stoic Illya. She feels a little like crying herself, but she knows it wouldn’t help anything right now. Instead, she rocks and comforts him, holds him tightly so he knows he isn’t alone. Something about his statement jangles in her mind, and then she remembers.

“Illya,” she says, sitting on the bed, going over his words very carefully in her mind. She voices her thoughts out loud. “Remember when we found him handcuffed in that freezer? We were in such a rush to get him out of there that we didn’t even take the cuffs off until later.”

Illya blinks slowly, and finally nods. 

When she’s sure this is penetrating the drunken haze, she tilts Illya’s chin up and looks him in the eye. “He didn’t cut the cuffs then, he picked the lock. Why would he saw them? He can pick locks much faster.”

Illya shrugs, thoughts spiraling too out of control with loneliness and sadness to see her point. “Can he? Maybe he is just mocking us. Joke’s on him, I don’t want to see him ever again!” 

“Illya,” Gaby says, a little more blandly than before, “We are not the only ones looking for him.”

“I’m not—” Illya begins, still going full force in anger, letting the rage bubble up inside him, hating Napoleon, wanting to throw him to the dogs, to Sanders, even, to—

_ Sanders  _ is looking for him, too. 

In Illya’s head this realization seems very sudden, though because of the four-fifths of vodka, it probably actually happens slowly. “Sanders?” 

It would be just like an American to saw through a problem rather than pick it. Napoleon is not actually a very stereotypical American in that way. What had actually possessed him to leave Napoleon, bloody and cuffed to a public railing, anyway—except anger? He had thought of it as a test, then, one that Napoleon had failed, but—but maybe it was not like this at all.

“[What have I done?]” Illya whispers, feeling actually faint.  

“Maybe nothing,” Gaby says. “But I’m going to find out. Come along, Illya.”

He’s already out, however— _ that’s _ the vodka. Gaby grouses, and gathers him and all his things together and shoves him into the back of a hastily rented car, places a call to Waverly where she apologizes for the current late hour, and discovers that likely location he’d take Napoleon to, in preparation for deportation back to the States. Certainly not out of Russia, but perhaps US-friendly Romania. 

She drives through the night, burning through her anger—though who she’s angry at, she isn’t sure. Then it’s just sheer determination that carries her.  Sanders can’t have Napoleon. 

...

Napoleon sits cowed and slumped in the back of the armored van, feeling very much like a prisoner. He shouldn’t have ever done this, he’d let both Illya and Gaby down because of some need to prove something to himself, and he’d thrown everything away. 

“Don’t be sad, Solo, I’m sure when you’re eligible for Parole at ninety they’ll be lenient on you,” Sanders gloats, grinning over his shoulder. “You could have stayed where you were, but I get it. I do. Two degenerates and a limey Brit. They obviously didn’t care much for you, either. With friends like those...”

Making a note to himself to break Sanders’ nose sometime when he could motivate himself to care again, Napoleon doesn’t bother to answer. He just resigns himself.

“Ah, well, I’m sure you’ll get all the attention you want in secure-max,” Sanders says with a chuckle, and tosses his cigarette out the window, only half-smoked, because he can afford the luxury now, as he pats his coat pocket full of Napoleon’s wallet brimming with cash money in all denominations. He plans not to mention it to his superiors. 


	4. Chapter 4

At ten in the morning, Gaby has to stop. She pulls over at a little cafe, and pats Illya’s face until he wakes up. “Get up. I need you to drink water, eat greasy food, and then drive.”

Illya startles awake, suddenly dizzy, and throws himself out of the vehicle to hurl. 

He might still be drunk, except that his head hurts. 

“Where are we?” he asks, wiping his mouth. Last night comes back to him in bits and pieces. “Shit. Napoleon! Did I dream that?” 

“Ukraine,” Gaby says, stepping away from the pile and sighing. “You didn’t dream it. I’ve been in touch with Waverly twice and he says he’s fairly certain that Sanders was in Russia at the time and also that he’d been breathing down Waverly’s neck until last evening. If I were a betting alpha, I would bet he has Napoleon.”

Maybe that’s all wishful thinking, but she’s determined to see this through. “I’ve been awake for three days. I need you to drive. Do you want to vomit again before I make you eat?”

All at once, things become perfectly clear, and Illya sets himself and his misery and his hangover aside to think of other people and things so he won’t have to think of himself. It feels much better this way. He blinks, wipes a hand over his face, and checks that he is vaguely presentable. “No. I am sorry. You wait in the car. I will get food, bring it out, we eat on the way. How are we on petrol?”

Gaby is perhaps too tired to argue, because when Illya returns with food wrapped in packages and several bottles of water (and one of gas, in case), she is curled up in the passenger side, asleep. She looks so achingly sweet, but he waits to kiss her until he has cleaned his mouth out, anyway. 

She’s mapped out a route for him to follow, though they revise it when they check in with Waverly, turning East to Iași instead of Bucharest, the too-obvious choice. And while she sleeps Illya has time to think—mainly about how stupid he is. That of all people Director Adrian Sanders got the better of him, and how—if they didn’t get him back—Napoleon would have to pay for it. 

So they had to get him back. 

“Where are you going?” Gaby asks when she awakens, and Illya is speeding down a country road. 

“Short cut.” 

She glares at him. 

“I promise. We need to get to the airport before them. I have...a plan.” 

“It had better be a really good plan,” Gaby says, grabbing the sandwich still in its wrapper and doing her best to eat it even over the bumpy, jouncing road. She’s  _ starving _ and she’ll need her strength, she’s sure. 

At the airport, Illya gives her the basics, and she looks at him incredulously, and then wordlessly passes over her makeup kit, before going to climb the fence and get onto the runway. “This is a terrible idea.”

He boosts her over anyway, and she’s glad she didn’t wear any of her nicest clothes. She turns back, kisses his cheek through the fence. “Good luck!”

“You, too,” Illya replies, and ducks into the toilet to relieve some poor schmuck of his duty for an afternoon. 

...

Illya is sitting behind the customs desk only just in time, with a false moustache and thick glasses, wearing a uniform that fits around but is a bit short in the arms and legs. It’s not a great disguise, but he’s prepared for it to be a just-enough-to-surprise-them ploy before he starts solving problems the way he does best, by shooting and punching his way through. 

But really what he should do is stall them, so Gaby has time to work.  _ Then  _ shooting and punching. 

Illya’s Ukranian is...fine, but it’s better than the lackey of Sanders’ who speaks it, anyway. “[Hello, gentlemen. Allow me please to see your boarding passes and your luggages?]”

The lackey fumbles through a Diplomatic Immunity speech, and Illya replies coolly that this is merely standard procedure for all luggage. They merely want to ensure that no hazardous materials are brought onto this experimental jet, using enough technical sounding terms that the lackey takes several minutes to translate for Sanders, who looks annoyed and impatient already—too annoyed and impatient to look any higher than Illya’s badge. 

This man really has been behind a desk too long, Illya surmises. 

Napoleon might not even have recognized Illya with the moustache and disguise, especially since he’s looking at the floor with his hands cuffed together (a fresh pair, cinched tightly to his wrists and with a far more expert locking mechanism) and tucked under a folded jacket to avoid undue notice. 

But the  _ voice _ he can’t mistake. He looks up at last, and sees—well if it’s not Illya, it’s his twin brother in a bad false moustache. Confusion floods him. Why is  _ Illya _ here? Hadn’t he already given Napoleon up? 

He cottons on relatively quickly to the fact that Sanders is being stalled, and ever the quick thinker, and perhaps remembering that last kiss with something more like hope than rebuke, Napoleon leans into it.

“I speak Ukranian, you know. Would you like me to help?” he says, shifting against the man restraining him by the elbow. He’d been docile up until now, and the man doesn’t seem to like the change, jerking Napoleon back.

“[They have a lot of guns in their luggage,]” Napoleon adds, helpfully. “[The permits are all in my wallet, which this man has.]”

He indicates Sanders, adding to the general confusion. 

“[Why are you carrying this man’s wallet?]” Illya asks very politely, playing  _ very  _ dumb. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Sanders snaps, pushing past finally. 

As Napoleon is marched by, their eyes lock briefly, as Illya pretends to put up a fuss and be bowled over by the CIA thugs. The beta pheromones he sprayed on before he got dressed help to sell it, even as he gauges their collective strength and decides he could beat them up in, say, an Italian bathroom easily. 

-

“Oh, excuse me,” says the Stewardess, coming out of the cockpit straightening her hat and fixing a shock of blonde hair. “I’ll just take your tickets.”

“You’re not the usual girl,” one of the men notices, and Sanders doesn’t look happy either.  “We don’t have tickets, this is a private plane. You must be used to commercial flights.”

Napoleon gives her a glance, waiting for Gaby to communicate what she needs him to do. She looks at them, exasperated. 

“That’s not how we do things,” she says. “Tickets,  _ please _ .”

“Is there problem?” Illya asks, coming up behind the last of them like he still wanted to check their paperwork.

“Where is the pilot?” someone asks from the cockpit.

“He's checking something on the engines,” Gaby says calmly. “So you have time to show me your tickets.”

“I'll show you my ticket,” Sanders says, and pulls a gun.

But Illya is close enough to do something about that, and actually disarms the man, takes his gun, empties it, and pistol whips him in the face.

“Oh my God, it's—” someone cries, and the fight is on.

Two of them rush Gaby, and one slips by her into the cockpit, but though the plane shudders like it wants to start, it whines and stalls out several times before she fights her way back in and gets the idiot to stop trying by braining him with a tire iron.

Illya is trying to get to Napoleon, aware that he’s vulnerable, letting himself rage-blackout until he vaguely registers that Sanders’ men are not getting back up and, indeed, are throwing down their weapons and up their hands. These, he leaves, and faces off against Sanders.

The CIA Director has drawn another gun from somewhere, and as Gaby and Illya move toward him, he holds the weapon to the back of Napoleon’s neck. 

“Napoleon!” Gaby cries, as Sanders backs them toward the stairs again. 

“No sudden moves, you two, unless you want to see this thief’s brains splattered all over your terrible wigs.”

“They were good enough to fool you,” Gaby says. 

Illya is carefully talking himself down from thinking he’s faster than a bullet and that just rushing the Americans won’t actually help matters. 

“I don’t think this plan is feasible,” Napoleon says, trying to buy them time. He makes a steadying motion at Ilya, and then shifts in Sanders’ grip, locking eyes with Gaby. “What will you do when you reach the bottom of the ramp, Sanders? This is still Romania, this is the only plane to America you can put me on.”

“I’ll call for backup, they’ll come retrieve us. You’re going to be extradited, no matter how hard you squirm,” Sanders says, bordering on manic. The shift in his attention is all Gaby and Napoleon need, and he throws his weight back as Gaby lunges for the gun, which goes off in the tiny space as the three of them all topple down the stairs and land at the bottom in a heap. 

“Gaby! Solo!” Illya shouts, actually vaulting down and landing on his feet in time to kick Sanders’ gun out of reach and step on his back. And, because he’s angry and he’s not exactly thinking, he hits Sanders hard enough in the back of the head to knock him out cold. 

“Are you alright?” Illya demands, getting off Sanders and going to Gaby first, who is clutching at her leg and breathing carefully. “Are you hurt?” 

“My—ankle, maybe? Foot? Damn it, Napoleon, this is your fault,” she hisses. 

“I’m sorry for pinning him down so you could have a proper go at him,” Napoleon answers, mouth tight. “Next time I’ll just scream ‘help, help’ like a proper omega in distress.”

Illya tries to inspect her foot, but his hands are shaking too much. 

“We need to get out of here before he wakes up or any of these fools try to call for backup,” Gaby reminds them, when he proves useless. 

“Okay. Okay. Let me carry you,” Illya says, though part of him still worries that then Napoleon can and will run away again if his hands are full.  

Napoleon pauses only long enough to get his hands in front of him so he can work with them, though it’s highly unorthodox. He yanks his wallet out of Sanders’ suit pocket, more for the fact that all of his identification is in it than any real desire to collect all of his earnings back, but when he passes it to Gaby for safe-keeping—

“Here, you know I can’t leave you without this.”

—it’s still practically bulging with cash. 

“Napoleon!” she cries, half-scolding, but he doesn’t answer, and she isn’t sure what to say, either. 

They find the key to the cuffs on Sanders, too, and then they rush back through the airport, and Napoleon manages to hail a taxi, and divest it of its driver with Illya’s help. “Do you want the wheel, or do you want to stay with Gaby?”

“I—” Illya starts, not sure where he trusts Napoleon now, or himself, for that matter. 

“ _ Illya _ ,” Gaby says, annoyed and in pain, almost faint-sounding, and he snaps out of it for the moment. 

“You drive,” Illya instructs, because administering First Aid to his already angry alpha girlfriend sounds preferable to having to even deal with Napoleon. “Head south.” 

He isn’t sure his own superiors will be pleased about what he’s just done. They should probably check in with Waverly, too, if he hasn’t fired the lot of them. They need to get somewhere where they can get away quickly. 

“ Scheisse, Scheisse, Scheisse,” Gaby hisses as he lifts her leg into his lap and shuts the door. 

“I am sorry, just let me get a look at it,” Illya says, willing his hands to stop shaking, though they only mostly do so. 

“I can take us to a hospital?” Napoleon offers, putting his foot down on the accelerometer of the ancient taxi and feeling it buck and sputter in response. He reaches over and shuts off the meter, and the car gives a surge, leaving Napoleon rolling his eyes and muttering a curse in Romanian.

“It’s broken,” Gaby says, gritting her teeth. “I felt it snap under all the weight. Right—there!”

She hisses and recoils from Illya’s touch as he inspects the bruised and battered area on her shin where the fracture is—glad at least that it doesn’t look like a compound fracture. 

“A hospital,” Napoleon confirms, digging in the glove box for a map. At least this little country road in Romania doesn’t have much traffic on it. “I’m sorry, Gaby.”

“Not your fault,” she says through gritted teeth, and then adds, “Oh, no, wait, it  _ is _ .” 

It’s a genuine dig, but also maybe teasing, as he catches her trying to smile at him in the rearview mirror (though it’s really more of a grimace). 

“Hospital is a bad idea,” Illya ventures. “They will know to look for us there, and they can’t do more than immobilize it.” 

“They can  _ set _ it, Illya, and stabilize it.” Napoleon says, with a glance back at the Russian.

“We also need to get a new car,” Gaby says, sweating. “The cabbie will report this one missing.” 

Illya sees a sign for a hospital and sighs. Maybe if they are quick. “Take this exit, Solo. We pay up front. You get her in there, I’ll find a new car.”

He eyes Napoleon warily, though he knows Gaby can take care of herself, if she needs to. She has his money, after all, and, a vicious part of him thinks, that’s what Napoleon cares about. 

Illya looks away when their eyes meet in the rearview mirror.

By the time the get to hospital, Illya has wrapped Gaby’s foot in their stolen clothes to immobilize and pad the area. He isn’t sure if it’s in her foot or her ankle, but luckily nurses roll a wheelchair out to the car when they park in the emergency zone. Illya switches places with Napoleon—again avoiding eye contact, like he’s scared of him—and leaves the taxi in the taxi zone to procure another escape vehicle. 

The Fiat that must belong to a doctor here will do nicely. 

Napoleon puts the rush on the doctors—lucky for them, it’s quiet enough that she can be seen right away, though the way they take x-rays in this place is barbaric. They don’t even offer Gaby anything stronger than a couple of pills as a painkiller, so Napoleon manfully offers his hand for her to mangle as they make sure the bone is set correctly and work on putting it into a plaster cast. He leans over and kisses her knuckles even as she smashes his hand.

“I haven’t forgiven you, you know,” Gaby says, looking at Napoleon with clear anger.

“This last part isn’t my fault. I was on the point of turning around in Russia, you know,” Napoleon says.

“You should never have left at all,” Gaby snaps.

“It’s not  _ you _ two, I figured out,” Napoleon says. “It’s the idea that I have no freedom of my own anymore. No part of myself isn’t owned. It was alright when I could spy as a captive and my personal life was still mine, but then I lost control of that, too. It’s a poor excuse for what I did, but imagine if you were stuck where I am.”

She shows her teeth at him, angry that he could think that way. 

“So you thought acting out would get you anything other than  _ less _ freedom?” she hisses, letting her anger speak for her pain, both immediate and lingering. “Napoleon, you almost ended up in  _ prison _ . Grow up. None of us are free.”

“For a few days, the pressure was off,” Napoleon says, but he doesn’t sound at all proud of it.

The nurse coughs, and Gaby redirects her attention enough to thank the doctor and nurses for their help, in broken Romanian. 

“Pay them, Napoleon,” she concludes, hobbling off the table with the help of the crutches they give her.  

He pays the money, and follows her out, ready to catch her should she fall. They were right that he’d been childish, and even if they weren’t, now wasn’t the time to argue his case. He’d thought they would have just let them go. Illya has already taken another car, and Napoleon helps Gaby into it, easing her into the passenger seat while he himself gets into the back like a prisoner.

“We should find a city. Lay low for a while,” Napoleon suggests. “Get in contact with Waverly.”

He deserves the stony silence that greets him, swallows it like a little poison pill, and then leans back and withdraws. They don’t need his advice, they never have. He goes silent, and watches the world pass outside the window, feeling suddenly disconnected from all of it again. 

They drive mostly in silence. If Illya thought getting Napoleon back would be a happy affair, a relief, he was wrong. He’s too angry, still, and worried, and above all crushingly  _ guilty _ , so he has no idea what to say. If Napoleon felt trapped by them before, he probably doesn’t appreciate being left as he was for Sanders to find. And now Gaby and Illya are all he has left, trapping him further, still. 

“We should not contact Waverly for a few days,” Illya says, and he has no plans of checking in with Oleg (not that he often does, anymore—he’s not sure his director even knows he was briefly in the country). “He needs the excuse of not knowing where we are, if Sanders asks.” 

He glances at Napoleon, wondering if he should ask if the American wants to be dropped off anywhere—does he still want to go to Japan?—had their guess even been right?—but whether because he decides it’s too cruel or too easy, he doesn’t. They’re halfway to Istanbul, where this all began, sort of, and it’s as good and crowded a place as any to hide from their respective governments, and where Napoleon can slip away again if he wants to. 

“Will you drive?” he asks Napoleon. “I have not slept.” 

This sounds too needy, desperate— _ I didn’t sleep all week for want of you _ —so he adds, awkwardly, “Because we were driving.” 

He tosses Napoleon the keys. “Keep heading south.” 

Napoleon accepts the burden without comment. He’s hardly slept either, but he’s perhaps fresher than they are, so he takes the wheel, leaving Illya and Gaby to stretch out together on the back seat and rest, a good compliment to each other. He only watches them a little, before he adjusts the mirror and turns his attention to getting them out, driving until the signs change language and then change again, and the day has worn on toward evening. 

When he stops at last, it’s at a place that he wouldn’t call a hotel; a boarding house, perhaps. An inn. There’s no running water, and it’s far and away from the places they’d usually stay with Napoleon’s input, but there are beds to sleep in, and for money, the owner is willing to pretend he’s never seen them. 

Napoleon carries Gaby up the narrow stairs, and settles her into bed, and then Illya into a second one. The beds are small and narrow and there isn’t a third, but he pushes them together for Illya and Gaby and makes sure they each have what they need before he settles down to sleep in the room’s chair. 

Illya is surprised he sleeps through this—is surprised he sleeps at all—like his body trusts Napoleon more than he does. 

He snaps fully awake in the dark of early morning to find Napoleon shifting uncomfortably, and scrambles immediately out of bed. “Here, you sleep. Where are we?” 

_ Why are you still here? _ he's too afraid to ask, but he touches Napoleon’s shoulder. 

Napoleon rouses only slowly, but Illya’s voice calls to him like something old and comfortable and wakes him from his fitful drowsing. Instead of taking the bed, he stands up and—hesitantly—leans into Illya for comfort. He doesn’t put his arms around him, as if knowing better. Just a long moment of chaste contact before he answers.

“We’re in Bulgaria. Near Plodiv, but off the beaten path,” Napoleon says, keeping his tone low so as not to wake Gaby. “We can be in Istanbul by two, if we leave in the next few hours. I thought we might go all the way to Cairo, if we have to.” 

Illya is surprised by the contact Napoleon initiates, though heartened by it as well. 

“Alright. Good. You—you should sleep,” he whispers in return, and after several moments warring with himself, he puts his arms around Napoleon. The hold is loose enough at first, in case Napoleon wants to pull away, until it tightens and becomes something for himself, to remind himself that Napoleon is real and safe and, for however long,  _ here _ . 

“I will,” Napoleon says, and then sighs out. “I’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t I?”

His specialty, making a mess. Making a profit usually  _ from _ making a mess. Instead, he only draws away reluctantly, and settles down into the bed that still smells like Illya—like a long day, and a little blood, and copper and chasing. It’s strangely comforting.

Illya shakes his head, but he’s not sure Napoleon sees it. He still isn’t sure what to say, or even what to feel, really. Napoleon is sad and sorry, as close to ears flat and tail down as a person can get, and Illya isn’t sure whether he wants to relish in it or if it makes him sad, too. He’s mostly, he supposes, worried that he never actually saw beneath Napoleon’s mask. Worried that that’s a stranger in his bed next to his girlfriend because  _ he just left them, _ and Illya hadn’t remotely seen it coming. He’s a spy, so he knows how people work, even if he’s not always sure how to interact with them. But Napoleon had ripped the earth out from under him.

Illya tries several times to speak, giving up only when he hears Napoleon beginning to snore softly. He never stops asking himself what he did wrong. 

When it’s light, he wakes Gaby with a soft kiss, offering her medicine and water while Napoleon still sleeps. “I am going to find something for us to eat before we go. Are you alright?” 

She feels a little warm, but not dangerously so. 

“I want coffee,” she says, sitting up, kissing Illya’s cheek after she finishes her water. “Where are we going? Have we decided?”

She glances over at Napoleon, still sleeping, and then makes to get up. “I want to come with you to find breakfast. So I don’t put a pillow over his pretty face while he sleeps.”

Illya laughs at that, surprised a bit by Gaby’s reaction. “Maybe I wake him and we all go. I don’t—ah. Want him to wake and we’re…”

He swallows nervously, eyeing the other bed. 

“What,  _ gone _ ?” Gaby huffs, bitterly. She might be impressed by Illya, though whether because he is so foolish or so kind she isn’t sure. “Fine. Where’s the toilet here?” 

“Down the hall,” Illya says, going to Napoleon’s side of the bed. “Wait and I’ll—”

“I’m okay,” she says, already hobbling out the door. 

Illya waits, when she is gone, watching Napoleon sleep. He settles on touching the backs of his knuckles to his arm, though he wants to kiss him and touch his hair as he did with Gaby. It’s awkward, again, or maybe, like always. He’s confused around Napoleon now, and wary, still. 

“Napoleon?” No, that’s wrong. “Solo. Time to get up.”

Napoleon feels a bit like he’s been run under a bus, but then again they all probably do. He wakes, and seems at a loss for what to say. His confidence is shaken. It’s all too tender, yet. He only nods, resigned, and gets up. He does his best to make the suit he’d been wearing for far too long presentable, still wearing some of the bruises on his face from his fight with Illya in Moscow. 

“I can drive again,” he offers, making an attempt to get them back on their rails. “We should have breakfast, first.” 

“No, it’s—I am fine to drive,” Illya says, relieved at something he can talk to Napoleon about. “We will find breakfast. Gaby needs to take her pills with food.” 

Also he isn’t sure when he last ate, much less Napoleon. 

“Are you alright? I never, ah.” Illya scrubs a hand through his dirty hair, too tired to be very embarrassed. “Did I hurt you? Did they?” 

“They said you’d sold me to them on purpose,” Napoleon reveals at last. He presses his suit as flat as he can make it with his hands, and washes in the water basin—his face, his hands, enough water in his hair to keep it out of his face for now. Then he gestures for Illya to follow him with his chin. “Did you? I’ll understand. We’re all allowed to have a change of heart now and again.”

Illya glowers darkly, feeling even more guilty, even though he’s innocent of this particular charge. 

“ _ Did I _ ?” he demands, wondering if Napoleon even knows  _ him _ . He actually splutters for a moment before he gets out, “Napoleon! Of course not!”

He’s at Napoleon’s side in an instant, searching his face, but not sure what he will find. “I-I am going to kill him.” 

“Well, I’m more inclined to believe you than Sanders,” Napoleon admits. “But even you have to admit I would have deserved it. “

Illya is still giving him a hard look, more hurt than angry.

Napoleon gives his head a shake, as if to clear it, trying his best to reassemble some of his composure. “I believed it only because I’d been a terrible person, you’re right. I know you better than that.”

Napoleon reaches out, offers his hand in truce, at least for now, an utterly serious gesture. “Thank you for coming back for me. Thank you for coming for me in the first place. I was wrong and my head was on wrong. I’m sorry.”

Illya looks at the hand for a moment, and pulls the omega into an embrace, to let his arms and his pheromones say what he cannot. Napoleon leans into it, relaxed by his presence. Maybe it was this, all this intangible attachment between them that had frightened him. 

“You couldn’t have thought of that before you put all of us through all of this?” Gaby demands, from the end of the hall.

Illya lets him go abruptly, as though worried even his arms have said too much. 

Napoleon offers her his hand next. “Apparently not. Blind panic. I’m sorry to you, too. I’ll bring you breakfast in bed for the next three months, and call it a start at making up to you.”

“A good start,” she says, still sounding annoyed. “Come on, now. I'm hungry. Let's go.”

They all pile into the car since the establishment is far from the sort that provides breakfast after a stay, both of them pausing to help Gaby. 

“Does it feel alright? Like the doctors have put everything back together the way it’s supposed to be?” Napoleon asks her.

“The bone is in place,” she says curtly. 

It's Illya’s turn to sigh. He doesn't quite know what to do with Napoleon, but the fight has gone out of him at least. Gaby, who had held it together before, is now, justifiably, angry. Probably because she is in pain. 

“I want some food now, Illya,” she growls, when the town has passed by out the window. 

“Shit,” he swears, not wanting to turn back but worried about where their next stop might be. 

“Keep going, I asked the man who rented us our room,” Napoleon says. “About another mile, there’s a little roadside place. He said they sell vegetables, mostly, but if we ask they’ll cook us some eggs and breakfast.” 

He endures Gaby’s stony silence as Illya drives, but just like he promised, a quaint little place appears out of the mist at the side of the road, advertising farm options and with a few kids running around, and a friendly picnic table set up with a red checkered cloth. Napoleon steps out to negotiate their food, and to chat with the young woman behind the stall while the older child runs up to the house to cook them breakfast. He does his best not to seem hollow-eyed or anxious, until he returns to his cohorts.

“They’re going to make us each an omelette. Fresh eggs, fresh cheese, fresh mushrooms and onions. I haven’t heard words that made me hungrier in a long time,” Napoleon explains, sitting down at the table. “My Bulgarian is not very good, but she has decent Russian. Not a word of English, however. So if you’d like to yell at me…”

Illya has Gaby’s foot in his lap to elevate it, and the sun feels good in the chill air. It's a desolate area, or else just flat farmland, and it must be rare to be able to sit outside like this, so the locals are taking advantage.

Gaby takes a breath as though to begin yelling at him, but Illya speaks first:

“Why?”

And Gaby sits back and nods. It's easier when Napoleon talks. Maybe, she says with her glare, he'll even tell the truth.

“Does it actually matter why?” Napoleon wonders, philosophically. “The reason isn’t good. I was just laying there, and my heart started pounding. I realized I couldn’t go very far without hitting the end of one leash or another.”

He looks away. “It’s an excuse, that’s all. It wasn’t anything you did. I had a bad response to a panic attack, I suppose. A midlife crisis. Whatever you want to call it, I found myself in something more serious than I’d ever experienced or expected.”

“You were...laying there. Between us?” Illya repeats. He wants to have all the facts straight.  _ It wasn't anything he did? _ “What leash is this?”

“He wants to be free,” Gaby explains (half-spits, because she is still angry), since he had told her this part.

Illya looks away. “So it  _ was _ something we did.”

“More like some failure to function appropriately inside myself,” Napoleon corrects, with a faintly angry look at Gaby in response to her spitting anger. “You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have done, that I didn’t  _ want _ you to. The problem was that I wanted it enough to let it…”

He shrugs at last, makes a gesture that encompasses everything. “I can’t take it back. I can’t undo it. I apologize. I’m sorry I disappointed you, I’m sorry I let you believe in me. The rest I’m not sorry for in the least.”

Napoleon pauses, and the food arrives, smelling amazing, but he’s lost his appetite. He thanks the woman anyway, and pushes the food around on his plate with his fork. “I can’t make any stronger case for myself. I’ll accept whatever you decide.”

Gaby tucks in immediately, and the more she eats, the more she feels bad about her outburst, but isn’t sure how to apologize, or if she merely has to accept Napoleon’s apology. Hell of a time to become the stereotypical emotionally stunted alpha. 

Illya is still regarding Napoleon carefully, like he’s trying to read him, to see what he didn’t see before. 

“What do you want us to decide?” Illya finally ventures, after taking a bite of his omelette and finding it very good—even incredible, or else he was just very hungry. “What you want in this is what I do not know, and it seems the most important part. You know what we want.” 

“I don’t, actually,” Napoleon says. “Gaby seems to want to eviscerate me.”

“Just punch you a little,” Gaby corrects, eating. 

“She's hungry,” Illya excuses. “And she did not get to punch you yet.”

“Amendment accepted,” Napoleon says. “I think I want to come back. First of all, it’s highly inconvenient to always come when someone needs you if you don’t spend your time together in other ways.”

He makes an attempt at humor, and Illya grants him a smile, but then Napoleon finally slumps, rubs his face. His hair is coming undone without anything holding it together and his suit has seen far better days. “I wish I could tell you what I want, but just now I’m not sure. Instinctively, emotionally, logically? It’s a wreck.”

Illya sets down his fork, and Napoleon does the same. “We want you back. But, the way it was before…”

He's not sure what he was going to add.  _ —was untenable? —which is now beyond reach? _ Maybe both are true. Illya sets his jaw.

“Maybe we start over. Partners. We protect you from Sanders. You go...to whoever you want for heats. And when you're ready, you come back.”

Gaby nods, liking this method. She knows Napoleon likes to be pursued, so this is enough of a punishment that she's happy with it. Or maybe her belly is full and she just wants to love him again, and wants to know that love is reciprocated. “And you don't need to pretend to be with us for our sakes. Maybe that's what started this whole mess. We'll figure it out.”

“Maybe I just need the certainty that it’s not pretend for any of us,” Napoleon suggests, but it’s quiet. This; all this, he can work with. Partners suits him. He’s not sure why all of that would leave a void in his belly like something dropped out behind his heart and is trying to flush his system out, but a great deal of his actions make no sense to him over the past few days. 

Illya nods, as though he can see right through Napoleon, how that relaxes him and wounds him at once. 

“I never thought any of it was,” he admits, also quietly, and Gaby takes his hand. None of it was pretend, for Illya—not being Gaby’s fiance, not using Napoleon as their cover—except perhaps his poor acting at hating it. 

Napoleon takes a deep breath. “No, you’re right. Start over. Partners. I won’t forget that we have to all take care of each other again.”

“Starting with yourself, Napoleon,” Gaby reminds him. “Eat up. Then I want to sleep in the car and find somewhere with a bath to sleep in tonight.” 

She's already leaning against Illya’s shoulder, encouraging him to eat his own meal, too.

“You want to sleep in the bath?” Illya asks with a wry mouthful, and she hits his arm. 

“I’m afraid you can’t take a bath with that cast on,” Napoleon reminds, but he does manage to eat a few bits of his excellent food. It’s from the heart, and he wishes his own were more equal to appreciating it at the moment. Finally, he pushes his plate away, and leans back. He doesn’t feel much better, but he feels sturdier. 

“I’ll do it carefully,” she says, tossing her hair. “You can’t hog the tub all night.”

“Very well, let’s get to Istanbul,” Napoleon says, getting up and dusting himself of. He carries the dishes back to the woman running the stand and thanks her, before returning to the car where Illya has helped Gaby in. 

Now that the world feels a little more right, and Illya remembers his place in it, he returns to the stand to buy some pastries for the road: she also tells him where he can fill up the jugs of water they have in the car. He wants to provide for his alpha and his omega—or, now, he wants to provide for his friends. It feels now like though there’s still a piece missing from his chess board, at least now he knows where it is. 


	5. Chapter 5

Istanbul in the fall is warmer than many places in the summer. Certainly warmer than where Napoleon grew up, and the fall is still early yet. However, his friend has graciously agreed to repay Napoleon’s one-time favor of acquisition with the invitation that they should spend time in his summer home while Gaby recovers.

It is lavish, but more subdued than some of their previous vacations, and Napoleon spends more time reading and roaming, but he always comes back, and usually brings something excellent for dinner.

True to his word, he brings Gaby breakfast in bed, and Illya a paper, doing his best to center himself with sunlight and time in their presence. He asks himself the question of what he wants frequently.

Illya dotes on Gaby, mostly when Napoleon isn’t around—he feels like it might seem to be gloating or taunting when he is in the room. And at first things are stiff and awkward between he and Napoleon, as they were when they were trying to figure out how to not be antagonists—except now they’re trying to figure out how to not be lovers. But Illya invites him to play chess, or go for a jog or a swim with him, and sometimes Napoleon even says yes. 

Gaby enjoys the attention, perfectly happy to let Napoleon play the servant if it makes him feel better and he looks so pretty doing it. But she is warm, and perfectly frank about how much she misses him, and invites him to sit on her bed and watch television, or settles herself in the kitchen to drink wine and watch Napoleon cook. 

On just such a day, Illya is out for his daily swim in the palatial pool in the heat of the afternoon, and Napoleon is making some kind of cool salad for their luncheon, his shirt sleeves rolled up and neat apron over his clothes. 

“You are the better conversationalist,” she tells him, swirling a cool white wine in a large glass. “I can always ask you to regale me with stories of your exploits after the war that got you in trouble in the first place. What was the most difficult piece you ever had to steal? No, no. If you had to steal, say, the fresco in the Palais that Illya so loved—maybe if you had to steal it to protect it, how would you do it?” 

Napoleon tears his eyes away from the clean lines of Illya’s body cutting the water, the way his power makes every gesture easy and fluid. He knows he  _ could _ go out and do something about that old ache, at any time. Find an unfamiliar face, someone he won’t have to see again. Why does it seem like so much trouble, now?

“For that,” he says, drawing his mind back in like a fish tugging and wiggling at the line. He gives Gaby an assured smile, slicing cucumber to transparent thinness for the salad. “I’d first need to study it. Make a perfect copy, to scale.”

He considers the next step. “Then, the trick would be convincing the government that the ceiling was in desperate need of repair. I’d have to hire an inspector, buy out a few people for a promised cut of the profits. A three man job, at least, including me.”

He gives her a wink. “Are you in the market for a scam to run?”

Gaby smiles, half-blushing, like Napoleon is teasing her. “Of course not! Idle curiosity.” 

She holds her glass up, and Napoleon refills it. She follows where his eyes trail down her leg, propped up on the adjacent chair, and out the door again to the pool. “Maybe I’m wondering what’s so exciting about it all that you still miss it.” 

“It’s the thrill you might get caught, of course,” Napoleon says, “Half afraid you might be, half hoping you are so you discover exactly what you can escape.”

Gaby raises her eyebrows a bit boldly: “How would you actually make the switch? In broad daylight, as laborers? Or would you work it out at nighttime?” 

He finishes with the cucumber and moves on, tearlessly slicing onion. “I would do it in broad daylight. Put up blinds to hide the work that was happening. Parts in, parts out. Scaffolding everywhere. All misdirection.”

Napoleon tosses an onion into the air and it seems to vanish before it comes back down, and he produces it again with his other hand, from his pocket. “Hang the new  one up after the work is completed. Might be decades before anyone discovered the change. Might be never. At that point, the question becomes; where’s the worth in a painting? In the authenticity of the signature? Or does the one that millions of eyes looked upon and marveled at become the one that’s worth something?”

He shreds dill by hand, releasing a fragrant scent into the air, tossing it into the salad. 

“Ah! The philosophical question!” Gaby cries, delighted as she leans in, clutching her glass with both hands. 

Napoleon is dinner  _ and  _ a show, and not just his gorgeous arms and perfect hair. The way he moves is as graceful and omega-like as any alpha could wish, but he’s strong and sure, too, and, well, if she has a size kink she has a size kink. 

But he never stops being a delight to talk to—when it stops being formal and flirty, like they are at a dinner party with a whole room to impress, he’ll still sleepily practice his German with her, or argue politics or fashion with Illya, or tell them stories of his childhood that she hopes are true. He must have read up on broken ankle bones recently, because his latest favorite is to try to frighten her with all the horrible things that can go wrong if she doesn’t stay off it. He’s also getting good enough at chess to make Illya sweat occasionally, which is delightful. 

It doesn’t help the general ache that she’s falling in love with his  _ mind  _ all over again. 

“The authenticity must be knowing the particular hand of the artist who painted it,” she finally decides. “If I want a Cassatt, I want to know that  _ she  _ painted it, with her own hand. I suppose, even if someone else made all the brush strokes just as she did, and signed her name just as she did, it’s still not  _ by  _ Mary Cassatt. I want a piece of her when I buy her painting. Knowing she touched that canvas with her own fingers, knowing her breaths kissed the paint to make it dry—that is what makes it special.” 

She blinks at Napoleon, wondering if he will like her answer. Maybe she’s not really talking about paintings, anymore. 

“So it’s the work that makes it worth,” Napoleon allows, with a thoughtful cadence in his tone. He enjoys hearing Gaby’s take on things. “And the name.”

He tosses the salad together until he’s sure it’s perfectly combined, and then brings her some, carefully arranged on a service. He refreshes her wine. 

“But by that nature, no new painter would ever be discovered,” he says. “Saying name makes worth dismisses the truth—visual appreciation is what gives a name worth. Matisse does something that touches our insides, our hearts. No one would know to seek that name if that wasn’t true.”

“Well—not the only value, of course,” Gaby says. “You’re talking now about why I’m just as happy with prints and fakes. The image is very pretty—even badly done forgeries are enough to impress  _ me _ , but then, I don’t have your eye. I just suppose what people pay millions for is the fame of a piece. The Mona Lisa is ugly, but…” 

Gaby shrugs, and follows where Napoleon’s gaze has drifted outside again. 

“You never did paint Illya, did you?” Or if he did, it had been left behind in the rooms they had practically fled in their search for Napoleon. Watching him pull himself out of the pool, water running down his muscles and glistening over his shoulders, looking like a drink of water that went on for miles, “ _ There’s _ a subject you cannot go wrong with.” 

“Sketches,” Napoleon reveals. “Idle things. I’m not much of a painter on my own time. I can copy, recreate. I never developed my own voice.”

He pauses, and settles down across from her, still wearing his apron, with his own glass of wine and his own plate, enjoying the sun on the veranda and the soft creak of the wicker and the way both their eyes find the same things to appreciate. It feels…soft. Complacent. The terror that might have come along with comfort doesn’t immediately follow, and Napoleon thinks there might be hope for him, yet. 

“I’m not disagreeing with you, mind,” Napoleon says, lowering his tone. “There’s a certain poetry in motion about our Peril, isn’t there?”

Gaby’s smile reaches her eyes this time. That’s the first time she’s heard him call Illya ‘Peril’ since they got him back. “There is. Maybe you could practice? I’m sure you can’t go wrong, and you might find your voice along the way. May I have another helping?” 

She holds up her plate as Illya comes in, scrubbing his hair with the towel and slinging his shirt on, though it clings to his damp body. 

“You’re just in time. Napoleon has made a beautiful lunch for us.” 

Illya hums at the scene of domesticity before him, and joins them happily, sitting by Gaby and squeezing her knee (not the one propped up on a chair). A breeze wafts in from the open windows, cooling the water on his skin, and the plate Napoleon puts before him is  _ beautiful _ . 

“I’m sure I smelled it,” he says. “Thank you.” 

“We were just debating the worth of art,” Napoleon says, taking off his apron at last now that they’re all served. He folds it and sets it over the back of his chaise lounge, smiling at the pair of them and what a nice picture they make. “And I’m sure we’d love to hear your perspective. How Russian does a piece have to be before you find it valuable?”

It’s a very gentle tease, but one extended like an olive branch for Illya, who has many talents, though a true appreciation for art isn’t one of them. 

“Very,” Illya says, taking the salad in in huge mouthfuls that he enjoys very seriously. His body craves food after his workout, so he asks for seconds, too, while Gaby and Napoleon take up the conversation. He listens attentively, preferring, as always, just to listen to them, though he's prepared with a response each time they kindly try to draw him in.

Napoleon brings out the best in Gaby: Illya doesn't know what to say to get her to talk like this (unless he asks her about cars). Instead of being jealous of this skill, however, if he's going to wrestle with ugly emotions it's going to be hating Napoleon for not wanting to be  _ with _ them like he should, like Gaby wants and like he wants. 

Finally, Illya gets up to take their dishes and raid the kitchen for carbs, eating a few slices of bread and cheese before starting to do the washing up. It's his job, effectively, with Gaby laid up, and he almost enjoys it, if it means providing for Napoleon’s needs and getting more tasty meals.

“Well, that’s an opinion that can be expected,” Napoleon says, sounding fond, watching Illya tidy the dishes as he finishes his wine and tries to decide what best to do with himself. Finally, he decides, once he’s sure the conversation is done and that everyone feels level and even for once, that he’s going to go out. 

“I’ll pick up another bottle of wine on the way home,” he tells Illya, as he passes through the kitchen. “I may be late, but I will be back.”

He puts the apron away before he goes, tidying it, wondering if this sort of thing would have been easier if he’d never stuck his foot in it. Of course, it was all a bit of a mess, then. But he has an itch, and he’d be best suited to scratch it in a passing way. An easy way, after all of this.  _ You made your bed, Solo—or someone else’s, I suppose—now there’s nothing for it but to lie in it. _

If he changes his mind, he can always just come home with wine, after a long wander. 

If Illya flinches at Napoleon’s plan, he hopes it's imperceptible, or that only Gaby notices. But maybe it's nothing to do with their sometime relationship and only his usual concern for his partner, or a product of the general sexism of his upbringing. It's funny to hope that it’s that.

“Have fun,” he says, not looking up from the dishes. “Be safe.”

He can't keep the uptick of concern out of his voice, but maybe his concern would be more obvious if he did. 

Gaby reaches for him, squeezing his arm. “Thank you for dinner. We may not wait up, but let us know when you get in.”

They have nowhere to be the next day, of course, and an interrupted sleep is better than worried dreams. For Illya, mostly, who doesn't remember them (or pretends not to) when he wakes.

“I will,” He promises, giving her a warm smile. An appreciative one. His confidence is such that he goes out without even checking his hair in the mirror, and then he’s gone.

Gaby glances at Illya, at the stiff set of his shoulders. “Bring me another glass of wine, Illya dear?”

She holds up her glass with a winning smile at him, and a glance at the nearly empty bottle on the counter. It’s mostly just a ploy to get him near, to take Illya’s wrist and pull him down to kiss him, to distract him, to touch something she knows she can hold down and have.

“You drink too much,” Illya teases when she releases him from the kiss, but he's poured her more wine anyway, and sits on the cool tiled floor with his arms and head in her lap. His hair is still damp and he smells like the pool. “Do you think he'll…?”

He doesn't finish the question.

Gaby turns a cool gaze after the direction Napoleon’s gone, running her fingers through Illya’s hair, soothing over his skin, the back of his neck. She seems to genuinely think about the question, eyes distant. 

“Maybe this is optimism,” she says. “But I think he’ll try it. Whether he carries through with it or not, he’ll find something missing. Something he wants back.”

She leans down and kisses his forehead, and then wrinkles her nose at the scent of chlorine in his hair, sharp and real and reminding her of summers very long past. “Do  _ you _ want to…?”

She doesn’t finish the question, but it’s delivered in a way that’s suggestive enough that she doesn’t have to. 

“Always, my Chop-shop girl,” Illya smiles, and lifts her off the chair and into a kiss, her legs wound around his hips. Careful with her foot, he carries her into the bedroom where they have slept together these past few nights, and lays her back on the bed. “Even if there is something missing.” 

He leaves the door cracked, so they’ll hear Napoleon come in. 

Illya’s delighted, when he lifts her skirt, to find Gaby already hard, and preens, “You  _ were  _ watching me in the water.” 

Gaby actually laughs. “You were  _ showing off _ ! Illya, we must be rubbing off on you.”

She tails her words with a gasp as he touches her, rocking her hips up carefully as he palms over the bulge in her underwear, and she drapes her hands over his shoulders, rubbing and touching, adoring him with her hands. She’s glad things were never—or were only briefly—complicated between  _ them _ at least. Perhaps that was why it was better sustainable with three of them.

“You rubbing off on me is not a bad thing,” Illya suggests with a wry grin, and he’s almost glad Napoleon isn’t here to hear that terrible pun. Maybe he misses him so much he’s trying to replace him in some way. 

She pulls Illya up for another kiss, arching her body against his. “You look very good in the water. Almost as good as you’ll look between my legs.”

Illya’s blushing, now, and places a pillow under her hips and two under her foot before kissing down her body. He hasn’t bothered with her dress, and neither has she, and he’s still wearing his open shirt and swimming pants—but he tugs her panties down and off, tossing them to the foot of the frankly enormous bed as he takes Gaby in his mouth with a soft sigh. He’s almost good at this, now, and definitely loves it, loves all tastes of her, as he twirls his tongue around the head, squeezing her knot and probing inside her with gentle fingers. He moans to demonstrate his enjoyment, but when she flinches he lays a heavy hand on her thigh so she won’t move her foot too much (more for his safety than hers, after the first time she kicked him in the head with the heavy plaster). 

Gaby tilts her head back and moans, letting him hear how much she appreciates it considering she can’t really move against him. Instead she writes her approval in the way her fingers move through his short, wet hair, guiding him until she sighs and gasps and he’s right where she wants him. He  _ is _ getting better, and his enthusiasm makes up for any shortcomings (not that she could list any at the moment). 

It’s faster now, because it’s always better when it’s  _ Illya _ , when it’s someone she trusts implicitly and that her body knows to respond to. Positive association, like that man with his dogs and their bell, perhaps, but it’s not very long before she’s pulling him up, pulling their mouths together to taste herself on him.

“I want you in me,” she says. “But you’ll have to be slow and gentle. Well, a little gentle, anyway.”

Illya bites his lip nervously, and then leans in to bite  _ her  _ lip. 

“You don’t like it gentle,” he reminds her, teasing her by kissing down her dress and biting her nipple through her dress while he frees himself of his pants. “But slow I can do.” 

“No I guess not,” she laughs, and then yelps, rolling her hips up just a little, not enough to hurt her leg.

He then drops back between her legs to lick her open. He can’t help but think of doing this for Napoleon, who is always so slick and wet here for them, and supposes such a thing can’t be faked, exactly, before he returns to the moment. He supposes she won’t mind, and wonders if her thoughts are wandering along with Napoleon, too. 

Illya gets his arms under her, lifting her up into his mouth so he can work her open and wet with his own juices. They have lube, too, so he’s not worried, and he’s certainly not hurried. If she wants slow, he is glad to oblige. He could probably eat her out until she fell asleep (or he did). 

It’s like a low burn; a pot set to boil over a very low flame, and maybe her thoughts wander once or twice to Napoleon—he hasn’t even been  _ gone _ that long. Had he already found—was he already this deep into it? Logically she knows better. She gives her head a toss, groaning Illya’s name a little like a curse. 

“More,” she demands, greedy and a little anxious, wishing her thoughts would come back to this, and the here and now of things. They  _ could _ do this all day, but her mind is a little more bent on gratification somewhat sooner. 

“It is alright,” Illya assures her lowly, close enough that she can feel the vibrations from his voice. “I have you, Gaby.”

He centers himself, makes himself aware of only her, his alpha, whom he would live and die for, and swallows her cock while he works her open with slicked up fingers until her thighs are actually trembling. 

When he finally slicks himself up, he can mostly use his precome, and he leans to one side to avoid her injured leg as he guides himself into her. “Ah, my Gaby. My love.”

She sighs, as if it’s a  _ relief _ for them to finally connect like this, a reassurance that they are together, that they connect like this just  _ so _ . She’s almost loose enough from his attentions that there’s no pinch, even with how  _ big _ he is. “Illya, mm. Love you.”

Her voice breaks in pleasure, and she forgets everything but him for a little while.  _ Her _ alpha, the person who possesses her as surely as she possesses him, they belong with each other. She pulls his mouth against hers again, biting his lower lip gently, running her fingers through his hair, over his neck. 

“Love you, too.” He moves into her, slowly, a rolling motion that doesn't rock the bed too much and doesn't slam into her. There's no slap of skin against skin, but he is as unstoppable as a train, and he holds her still, and every time he takes her deeper. They kiss and bite gently, sigh and whisper each other's names. 

“I'm not going to knot you, though I want to,” he tells her, teasing, breathing against her neck as he rolls faster, stroking her cock between them. “Only good girls who follow doctor's orders get my knot.”

She actually chuckles a little at that, warmly, doing her best to hold still but it feels  _ good _ . “It’s funny you should say that, as someone who’s never followed—mm!—a doctor’s order in his life.”

Illya huffs.

She grins at him wickedly, trailing her hands down his back and then pushing her fingers into the cleft of his ass and against him, ghosting over his entrance until he jerks and squirms and she laughs at him and withdraws just to drum her fingertips against his lower back. It’s hard to concentrate with his hand on her cock and his cock inside of her, right where she wants him at the moment. 

“I’ll remember this,” she whispers, husky, her voice getting a little urgent as release rides up and against her thoughts, her body running along the edge of it. “Next time you’re begging me—oh!”

The rest of her words are lost, and she drags her nails over his skin and pulls their mouths together again fiercely as release shudders through her and she clamps down on him, as if her body refuses to let his get any further away from hers. 

“I hope you—fuck! Good, good, that’s it, my Gaby, I love—” but Illya’s words are swallowed up in a cry as he tumbles after her, and he bears down on her to squeeze their knots between their bodies to relieve that need. Come goes everywhere, mostly between Gaby’s legs and over her dress, but they don’t care, at least not immediately. 

He lays panting over her, kissing her hair and hips still stuttering as his knot swells, but his biology wanting something more even if his head and heart are fully satisfied. 

“I love you,” he gasps, when he can. “Thank you for staying.”  

It’s only now he realizes how grateful he is for it. 

She feels sticky and satisfied, and like everything, at last, is just right. She thinks that the way their scents are together always makes her feel better, more relaxed. She rumbles an answer that’s wordless at first, with her arms tight around him. “I love you too. I’d never go.”

After a moment, she shifts, and lets Illya help her get comfortable, curled up more next to him than under him, with her dress a mess and their limbs tangled together, but this way she can really put her arms around him and he’s less heavy.

She traces her fingers over the paths of his muscles, the curves of his arm, the plains of his back, his hair still a little damp. “You looked very good in the pool.”

“Cannot wait until you get this cast off and can join me,” Illya hums, nuzzling against her side and curling his arms around her. He hums, not sure how to admit this. “I like to look good for you.” 

It’s something Napoleon has taught him the value of. 

“I appreciate your allowances to capitalist indulgence, sometimes,” Gaby answers, kissing the top of his head. She has half a mind to just sleep like this, no matter the mess. After all, Napoleon can hardly fuss from wherever he is. The bath will be just as nice in the morning. And, she can’t help but thinking, as she cuddles against him,  _ there’s no harm in both of us looking as good as we can where wandering eyes can see. _

“I wasn’t the only one who appreciated you today,” she murmurs, pulling a light blanket over the both of them. 

Illya lifts his head a bit, to see if she is teasing. 

“Really?” 

He listens, like Napoleon might have returned, but he hears nothing outside, and he kisses Gaby’s shoulder, and uses his discarded shorts, still damp, to wipe some of the mess up. “Well, I’m not trying to…” 

He can feel her staring at him, though he’s left staring at her breasts through the thin dress. 

“Maybe I’m trying a little. Aren’t you?” 

“A little,” she agrees. “Who can blame me?  Besides, like either of us can complain if the other one is showing off a little. Even if he’s not paying attention,  _ I  _ am.”

She laughs again, just a little, and presses closer to him, reaching back to undo her bra beneath the dress so she can sleep a little more comfortably. Who wouldn’t want to be here? She’s sure Napoleon is on the precipice of realization by now. 

“Mm,” Illya hums, lifting her dress up over her head, and tugging the pillows out from under her so there was just one supporting the bottom half of her leg. 

“See, in Russia we call this communist indulgence, because you want to share me,” he explains as they lie down naked together. When she laughs, his head bounces on her chest, and he laughs, too. “Tomorrow. I will wash your hair.” 

“Now that’s  _ truly _ indulgence,” she agrees, leaning against his chest, easy and comfortable. “That will be the second time this week. You’re spoiling me.”

“It’s not too much?” Illya checks. “I don’t understand hair washing days and not hair washing days.” 

Gaby laughs. Closing her eyes leaves her drifting already, feeling good—her body is a little sore from the injury, but the rest is tired in a good way. She feels safe here, and confident that Napoleon will come back. Strange, now that he wanders further, her certainty that he’ll always return has solidified. 

In the small hours of the morning, he proves her true, tapping lightly on their slightly open door. “Good morning, I apologize for waking you up. I brought fresh wine and fruit.”

Illya lifts his head from where it’s pillowed between Gaby’s breasts, and lifts an arm, offering him a hand, or reaching for him in the dim light. 

“It’s alright, Napoleon,” Illya says. Maybe that’s all he ever needed to say.  

He hesitates then, surely having caught a scent of what they’ve been up to, and in her groggy haze Gaby registers some pleasure that he  _ is _ back, just like she expected, even if he carries the scent of a strange alpha with him. He’s at least polite enough to stay far enough to keep the scent from carrying too deeply into the room.

Illya drifts off, or pretends to, but Gaby is watching Napoleon hesitate in front of the door. She’s not sure what to say that won’t sound unnecessarily cutting or falsely kind, so she waits. Napoleon’s supposed to be the one good with words. 

He has both nothing and everything to say. It wasn’t what he thought it would be; perhaps nothing to this point has been. There was no joy in what he’d found, certainly not enough to merit leaving all of this behind. He wants to be there in the warmth of their presence, but not this way. Not now, not smelling as he does of failure. He has always been fastidious in scrubbing the traces of alphas from him, but for them…

His teeth close with a click, and Napoleon steps away, sets the wine and fruit in the kitchen, and cleans himself in the shower. It hadn’t gone as far as it might, if only because it felt false and shallow, and while he’d reveled in that like a game before, and he thinks perhaps he might again if he can ever find the diamond hardness his heart once had, it hasn’t yet.

It’s the conversation about art that comes back to him, as he washes his hair, scrubs under his nails, and the back of his neck where anything else might linger. Was art worth more because of a name and recognition, or when someone looked at it; or hundreds of people looked at it and saw beauty?

In the end he thinks of the hand extended into the shadows, and he slips back into the alpha’s room, and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed before he remembers to  _ ask _ . “Can I—?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Gaby gasps, like she had been holding her breath to say it, and at the same time Illya starts up and says “Cowboy,” and they’re both reaching for him.

Napoleon relaxes into it, feeling the racing cadence of his heart go still, so he folds himself down against Illya’s back, smelling clean, but without the faintest complaint at the scratchy, going-stiff sheets or the intermingled scent of these two in the air. He puts his arm over Illya, reaching for Gaby, curling his palm over her shoulder and pressing his face against Illya’s, his body suddenly exhausted because  _ this _ is where he’s safe and can sleep. 


	6. Chapter 6

When Gaby and Illya wake up, Napoleon is still in bed with them, and that is all the miracle they need to believe. 

He’s wedged in between them, now, sleeping the sleep of the dead, curled up and belly-breathing, and Gaby and Illya glance up at each other before turning fond looks down on him. He must not have slept well all week, because even when Illya and Gaby move to kiss above him, he doesn’t stir, deep in dreamless comfort. The kind of sleep Illya still dreams of fucking him into. 

It’s hard to not remember that stomach-dropping panic that they felt when they woke up and he had been gone, but this goes some way to healing that, like maybe they can pick up and start again from here, like nothing ever happened and he woke up between them, after all. 

“I thought I dreamed this,” Illya finally whispers. He slides his arm over Napoleon’s side, running his fingertips over the smooth skin. There’s bruises in the shape of someone else’s fingerprints there, and he surprises himself that he just doesn’t care. Because Napoleon  _ came back _ . 

Gaby runs her hands through Napoleon’s hair to un-rumple it only once, mindful of waking him. She kisses his forehead, then leans over his slumbering form to kiss Illya, and supposes she’s come to the same conclusion; Napoleon is sleeping like a lost soul, and she tucks him in comfortably as she moves to get up, whispering to Illya.

“We should make  _ him _ breakfast today,” she suggests, though neither of them is much of a cook, they can rouse him gently with the warm smells of breakfast, perhaps.

Illya grabs her arm. “Let me get the fruit, instead? You're supposed to stay off that foot, and I don't want  _ him _ to wake up alone.”

Napoleon is  _ so warm _ , and even if it's mostly too warm here, it's cool in the mornings and so Illya thinks it's nice to put his arms around him and squish him between them so Gaby can feel how loose and soft and good he feels. He slips out of the bed now that Napoleon’s cheek is resting on Gaby’s shoulder and she can't quite get up, and returns with the fruit. Coffee is something he can make, and brings the French press in on a tray with cups.

“No reason we can't enjoy a breakfast  _ and  _ make sure he doesn't wake up alone,” Illya whispers, kissing Gaby and blushing when she looks impressed by what is really very minimal effort. 

It’s the scent of coffee and low murmuring that eventually wake Napoleon, and the warmth and comfort that flood him is  _ this _ side of alarming and all his panic very quickly drowns when Illya hands him a cup of freshly pressed and hot coffee and Napoleon can drink it leaning back against the headboard. 

“Thank you,” he says, to both of them. What was it that he was so scared of such domesticity? Maybe a terror of getting old—and yet, if these were the perks…

“Thank you for the fruit,” Gaby says, stealing a handful of grapes. “How was the market?”

“Hectic,” Napoleon says, more into his cup of coffee than over it. “But fruitful, clearly. The wine I found is excellent, too, but not for breakfast.”

“Hectic in the middle of the night?” Illya chuckles, curling a hand around Napoleon’s thigh. He appears a bit jumpy, still, but Illya tries to pretend not to notice, turning to Gaby. “Told you we should have waited until he woke up to drink the wine.”

“Oops,” she says, playing along, and leaning on Napoleon to take food from the tray Illya has rested across his knees. “So, Napoleon. Was this a moment of weakness or are you here to stay? I'm not responsible for Illya if you toy with his heart again.”

She forces herself to sound nonchalant, to not influence his decision.

“Nor I her,” Illya says levelly. If they've got him surrounded and this feels a bit like bullying, at least they're only bullying him for the truth. “Even if all we have is your sometimes, we should like to know.”

Napoleon’s insides give a faint jerk, but he forces himself to be calm, to finish his coffee, leaning between them with a tray of excellent fruit over their knees. He thinks about it, and then shakes himself like a dog shedding water from its coat.

“You have more of my ‘sometimes’ than anyone else I’ve ever known,” Napoleon admits, eyes downcast some. “It’s frightening sometimes, for me. On the other hand, I can think of far worse people to find myself devoted to, even if the thought of devotion is not one I’m quite created for.”

Gaby looks at him for a long moment, and Napoleon relents.

“It will always be you two I come home to,” he says at last. “I realized that in Russia, I’m just stubborn.”

“I did not give you much chance to realize it,” Illya apologizes, and takes Napoleon’s hand and kisses his palm. “If you prefer, you could think instead of how we are devoted to you.”

“That’s nearly as frightening and incomprehensible,” Napoleon says, but it’s in good humor.

“Or how we are devoted to each other,” Gaby corrects. “The way it should be. I don't know many omegas that keep their alphas as much as they are kept by them. Much less two of them.”

“And it's not as though you'll be stuck rearing our brood, or—”

“We'll leave that to Illya, if it happens,” Gaby chuckles.

“It won’t,” Napoleon says. “Not without another body involved.”

“—though we would probably all be disappointed if you stopped cooking,” Illya continues, ignoring this. But he sees a bit of panic flare up again in Napoleon's eyes, and he adds, with feeling, “And it does not have to be forever. Just. Do not just  _ leave _ .”

“I enjoy cooking,” Napoleon says. “And I don’t intend to eat nothing but Borscht my entire life, so there’s little to fear there.”

“Beets are good for you,” Illya admonishes. 

He reaches out, offers his hand first to Illya, and then to Gaby. “I won’t just  _ leave _ . I may wander, but I’ll always tell you first, and I’ll always come back. Does that suit all of us?”

Gaby and Illya look at each other as though communicating telepathically: really, all they’re doing, if anything, is sighing in relief. 

It is Gaby who kisses him first, cupping the side of his neck to turn him towards her. She says, when they break, lips wet with the taste of each other, “That suits me very well.” 

Illya squeezes Napoleon’s hand, staring down at how pretty his hands are, even if square and alpha-ish. They’re smooth and skilled, like no other alpha or omega. 

“And what about us?” he begins softly, not daring to look up until he has finished speaking. “What can we—or I—promise you? So that you’ll always want to come back? So you’ll always want to tell me that you’re going. So sometimes...you might even want to have me with you when you wander?” 

“What on earth can I ask you to give me that you  haven’t already?” Napoleon wanders, curling his hand into Gaby’s and then leaning up to kiss Illya, next. He draws back with a playful smile. “It’s more fun to steal what I want, anyway.”

“Be serious,” Gaby laughs, as Illya rolls his eyes. He was  _ trying  _ to be serious...

He passes her a few slices of pear, chewing his own thoughtfully. “Besides, as long as you’re there when I come back, I’ll be satisfied.”

“Well, you had your chance,” Illya says, like Napoleon can never ask him for anything ever again, and he settles against the headboard with his eyes closed, trying not to smile. “Now you can make us breakfast.” 

Gaby reaches around Napoleon to swat him. “Should give you just enough time to wash my hair.” 

“Maybe it  _ isn’t _ too early for a bottle of wine,” Napoleon says, content to eat fruit for breakfast. He feeds Illya a few grapes. “I could just go back to bed, you know.”

“What if I said I wanted pancakes?” Gaby suggests. Napoleon laughs.

“Do you?” 

“I think I do,” she says, “but not immediately. I’d like some more fruit, and a bath, and to lie in bed with my boys. And you have to do what I say, because—”

“Because it’s Napoleon fault you broke your foot, we know,” Illya groans. “When does that cast come off, again?” 


End file.
